scottobear | quoted from today's schlock mercenary (http://schlockmercenary.com) (Reply)

31st-Century English: Let's get this straight, although I speak English, I'm not its biggest fan. What we have here is a language that began as a bad habit shared by Norman soldiers and Saxon barmaids who discovered that if they shared that habit they could share other things. Then the island empire they populated went all imperial and the bad habit was exported to at least four other continents. Then their colonies compounded the problem by revolting and splintering the language, and then insisting on the right to absorb other cultures ad hoc and ad nauseum (but not ad-free, unless you subscribe.)

Give me your tired, your poor
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
And I will give them a horrible new language to speak,
Which they will then mutate even more. (emphasis added*)

And then, as if that wasn't bad enough, one of the colonies began exporting soldiers and technology across the face of the planet so that this mutated, awkward tongue became the de facto standard for business.

Needless to say, when Earthmen went to space and joined Galactic civilization, the language of corruption, conquest, and compromise struck the rest of the galaxy like a plague. It was like influenza among the native americans, or that Apple virus uploaded by that one guy during the Independence Day movie. Our galactic neighbors never stood a chance.

The worst part... Earth never apologized, and the descendents of the ancient royal families of the former British Empire (now comprising less than a billionth of a percent of the galaxy's English-speakers) continued to insist that everyone else was talking funny.

*Emphasis is also indicative of abject corruption of the original poem.</table>